The Private Blog of Doctor John Watson
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: Re-upload. These are the blog entries John Watson never posted!
1. Irene Adler, The Woman

**The Private Blog of Doctor John Watson – Irene Adler,** ** _The_** **Woman**

I don't know what to do about Sherlock at the moment – he isn't eating, isn't sleeping, and simply refuses to talk. He hasn't been the same since the news of Irene Adler's death – anyone else and I would say he was grieving – but this is Sherlock. I know he thinks that all other minds are inferior to his own, and I might not be able to tell a farmer from a grass stain or an airline pilot from his left thumb but I can tell when something isn't right, especially with him. I can tell by the pallor of his complexion that he hasn't eaten, and by the dark circles under his eyes that he hasn't slept in days. I can tell that his state of mind is suffering every time he picks up that violin of his by the melancholy way that he plays, and I am not ignorant to the fact that every time I so much as try to bring up her name with him he turns his back, to conceal his own tears.

Mycroft is worried, and I have done everything I can to keep an eye on him, but I cannot watch him twenty-four hours a day. Both myself and Mrs Hudson have been through this flat from top to bottom every night since _the_ night we received Mycroft's call, just in case he has somehow managed to sneak a secret stash of narcotics past us during the day – not that this is likely though as he never seems to leave the flat anymore, and nobody ever visits. I stay with him for as long as I can stand it, and then Mrs Hudson takes over the rest.

Before the Miss Adler incident Sherlock had been doing quite well at giving up smoking, I'd even managed to get him to listen to me and he'd started to heed the recommended dosage of one patch at a time laid out on the back of the packet – but now I make sure that I always have a cigarette to hand just in case he feels the sudden need to light up, in the hope that this may stave off the urge to use the narcotics as a way to fend off the pain.

Of course I only have Mycroft's word that this is to be his most likely course of action, but he has known Sherlock longer than me and I am sure he only has his brother's best interests at heart. Who am I to argue? I am only his friend and flatmate, and as such am liable to allow my judgement to become clouded with sentiment and concern. Mycroft is just like Sherlock – cold and rational – despite the fact that an understanding eye and a few sympathetic words might be all that is called for.

Mycroft doesn't deal with issues of the heart.

The truth is that I have never seen Sherlock like this before , he's usually able to remain so detached from his emotions, but I am beginning to think that maybe Irene Adler might have been the only woman Sherlock Holmes ever loved – and if that's the case I have no idea what affect her death might have on him in the weeks to come, and how long this might last. I can only be there for him, when he's ready to talk (if he's ever really ready to talk to me), and hope that for his sake this is only a brief descent into melancholy and that he's back to his normal, restless, petulant self soon.


	2. The Greatest Man I Ever Knew

**The Private Blog of Dr John Watson - The Greatest Man I Ever Knew**

The greatest man I ever knew – my best friend, Sherlock Holmes – lived just downstairs from me. In the comparatively short space of time that we lived together it didn't take us very long to become quite close friends. We had virtually nothing in common, but that never really seemed to make much of a difference, and I like to think that I came to know him reasonably well throughout those first few months. In many ways Sherlock was an enigma, even to me, a strange sort of oxymoron consumed by conflict and endless contradiction. There were days when I wanted to scream at him out of pure frustration because of his arrogance, or laugh at his ignorance of text book primary school education. He would simply stop what he was doing, look up at me and calmly explain to me however why it was that it didn't matter to him or why he just didn't care.

But when it came down to the real character of the man – which let's face it is what truly matters, and what has been called into question these past long months – Sherlock Holmes was a man of very few words.

Breakfast was often a daily ritual played out in silence in our house. Sherlock would read the paper – having spent the best part of the first five minutes pushing his food aimlessly around his plate in order to make it look as though he'd eaten something – whilst I updated my blog, and Mrs Hudson pottered around the kitchen unobstructed only due to the fact that her presence was frequently unobserved. Despite her regular protests that she was not our housekeeper she frequently went out of her way to make sure that we were well looked after, and both fed and watered, even making the occasional shopping trip to pick up the groceries Sherlock had so often forgotten to collect – how he ever managed to cope before the two of us entered his life I will never fathom. Perhaps we only encouraged his apparent idleness by our willingness to pander to his every whim. But he was Sherlock Holmes – and that was all the reason people seemingly needed.

Anyway, back to Mrs Hudson. I miss her dearly – and really must make a note to ring her as soon as I am settled into my new place – but if she's reading this now I just want to say that I am sorry. Hopefully she will understand my meaning, and accept my endeavour to make amends. The past few months have been difficult I confess, I never thought that I could feel so lost nor so lonely, but there can never be any excuse for shutting out such an old and dear friend – and sometimes it is just too easy to forget that she has suffered too.

When Sherlock was on a case he wouldn't sleep for days on end, couldn't eat, and would arrive home in the early hours of the morning, having spent hours wandering the streets of London in all weathers trying to clear his mind of anything irrelevant to his current case. The process exhausted him, it was always evident despite the fact that he never spoke of his own discomfort – he always seemed to have far more pressing issues on his mind – and if it wasn't for my constant badgering of him to take better care of himself it is doubtful that he would ever have considered his own body's physical needs at all.

I am only now beginning to realise however that I didn't really know Sherlock Holmes at all – because he would have been the last person I would ever have expected to take his own life – and I confess to the fact that I miss him. I miss him so much that it hurts to think about him most of the time these days – but just because it hurts that doesn't mean that I will ever forget him, and nobody will ever convince me that he told me a lie. I am proud – yes proud – of what he achieved, of the fact that he was never afraid to speak his mind, nor to stand up and be different, and I will continue to believe in Sherlock Holmes.

The truth is that in the end he gave too much – everybody wanted a piece of him, to share in that glittery and golden utopia we call fame. But fame is nothing more than an illusion, Sherlock never relished in the attention afforded to him by the press and the media, he struggled to accept and come to terms with his new found notoriety, and when the world turned against him he simply had nothing left to give. His reputation as the world's only consulting detective meant everything – and when Moriarty stole that away from him too I guess that was the last straw, Sherlock couldn't see that he had anything left to live for – at least that is the way it has always seemed to me.

I stood and listened to the final last words of a great, and good man – I heard the heartbreak in his voice – so will challenge anyone who dares to tell me that Sherlock Holmes was a fake – a fraud. You weren't there to watch him fall. You didn't see that very human, now broken body and the blood pooling on the pavement beside him – a body made not of cold, hard stone, but flesh, and blood and bone just like everybody else.

Now the name of Sherlock Holmes has been confined to memory, the world has moved on but I have not, only these days I can only see him in my dreams. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I will never hear his voice again, nor hear him say those infamous words which are now forever imprinted on my mind, " _the game is on_."

I find it so hard to believe that he's been dead now for almost a year. Sherlock Holmes was a great detective, a good man with a uniquely brilliant mind. He was good at his job, and I stand by everything I have ever said about him. He achieved so much in such a short space of time, but there was still so much he had yet to do. He didn't deserve to die the way he did – feeling betrayed by the world, as he must surely have done, and alone at the very end.

Nobody knew him like I did. He was and always will be my best friend, although I never once heard him say that he loved me – then again I never said so much to him either, even though I did very much so – and I guess he thought I already knew.


	3. I Will Never Believe

**The Private Blog of Dr John Watson – I Will Never Believe That Anything He Told Me Way A Lie**

My friend Sherlock Holmes was one of the bravest men I ever knew. I will never believe that everything he told me was a lie. He made my life a truly happy one – and I cannot believe that a man who could bring so much to what is so often such a dark and wicked world, permeated with monotony and vicious acts perpetrated by one man against another, could have been a fraud. He brought evil to justice, and never once did he ask for acknowledgment. He enriched the lives of everyone he touched.

People often didn't understand Sherlock – to them he was a cold man, heartless, a man made out of stone. But I know different. Sherlock Holmes was my best friend, and I have been truly blessed that he chose to let me in on his life.

My friend might not have understood people – he struggled to connect with them on an emotional level. He couldn't understand public displays of compassion – tears both appalled and embarrassed him – but just because the man couldn't understand emotion, that didn't mean that he was himself devoid of it. There was many a time I saw him cry, observed the tell-tale tremor of anxiety within his hands, watched him withdraw and descend into many a black depression, and heard the soulful sound of his laughter.

My friend was a hero. He sent me away, even knowing that he was about to face almost certain death. He saved my life that evening – he knew that I would never allow him to face that threat alone. I would have died for him, rather than face life without him.

I called him a machine – something I will never forgive myself for. Obviously now I know different, but I will never get my chance to apologise. Moriaty saw to that.

Yes Moriaty – for he was a man as real as myself and Sherlock. I looked into that man's eyes – those cruel lizard like eyes – the eyes of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering upon the world. Sherlock tried to bring an end to that cruelty, and lost his life in the process. They were indeed the eyes of evil – not those of an actor playing his part.

Sherlock Holmes was a man whose life was blighted by contradictions. He could be impossible to live with, but he made life exciting all the same. He didn't sleep, and when he did he rose late, often having lost half a day, he hardly ever ate, and very little water ever passed his lips, but none of this ever seemed to impede his almost boundless energy and his most singular gift of deduction.

In his last dying words he told me that he'd researched me, that's why he knew so much about my life – but how could he have known that I was going to bump into Mike that afternoon as I took my daily walk? I didn't take the same route I normally took that day – he would have had to have got inside my head to know my intentions, and not even Sherlock Holmes could have done that!

It pains me to think that people have lost faith in him. How fickle we all really are, to elevate a man to the heights of fame, and then strip him down again upon the words of a devil. Sherlock never wanted his name to be known, he didn't ask for fame – it was an encumbrance to a private detective – he never even asked for payment for his services, except just enough to keep a roof over his head and to enable him to live modestly. He lived purely for the thrill of the chase.

My best friend was a good man, he had a brilliant mind, and was a gifted detective who was absolutely exceptional at his work. He was an honest man, who never pretended to be something he was not – but above all he was a human being who deserved to be treated as such, in life as well as in death. Unfortunately we all seem to have forgotten that. Sherlock Holmes became an enigma – a character in a fairy tale perpetuated by the media – but he was at the end of the day a real man, of flesh and blood and bone.

I miss him, and if I live to be an old, old man I will never stop missing him. He made the months he was a part of my life some of the happiest ones – and my life is now a very empty existence without him.


	4. Sherlock's Return

**The Private Blog of Dr John Watson – Sherlock's Return**

Sherlock's been awfully quiet lately – I think I've finally started to come to terms with the Reicenbach incident, and – dare I confess – I think I may have finally learnt to forgive him for what he put me through. For those three excruciating years that I thought he was dead I'd have given anything to have him back... and now that he is, and I'm over the initial shock of it all, I don't really see that I've got any right to complain.

But now that I'm not angry anymore, those walls have started to close in around me again...

I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have Sherlock to worry about!

There hasn't been a single new case since he got back three weeks ago – well there wouldn't be, as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned Sherlock Holmes is dead, and those that do know the truth have lost their faith in him... even Lestrade it seems, as neither myself nor Sherlock has heard from him in over a week.

He tries to hide it but I think that the sudden revelation that things aren't just going to go back to the way they once were has hit him hard. He's taken to chain smoking all day long, spending long hours at a time locked away in his room... and he still barely eats.

I had hoped that his time away might have changed him in some way, he's had all this time to get used to having to look after himself, but I suppose Sherlock will never change – and perhaps I don't really want him to.

It's quite clear though that whatever he's been up too all this time he hasn't been looking after himself – when he showed up three weeks ago he was paler than I've ever seen him before, and, dare I confess, much thinner than I remember him. His ribs and collarbone protrude, and there has been little change to his physical condition these past few short weeks.

I fear things may continue like this until a new case comes his way... he just seems to have lost his zest for life, and I just can't seem to get through to him!

He won't tell me exactly what he got up to during those two years that he was away – but I'm guessing that he wasn't on a world cruise – and whatever it was it's obvious that he's having a hard time readjusting to civilian life again now.

I just wish that he'd open up to me.

I fear I may have contributed to his present state. When he first returned I was so angry with him for putting me through what he did that all I could feel was contempt for my friend, but now all I want to do is break down those walls he appears to have built up around himself and help.

I was too hasty in my judgements of him – all I could think about was how hard the past couple years had been on me – but it is now obvious that they have been tough on Sherlock too.

Perhaps he just needs reminding that there are still people who care about him – people who stood at his grave and cried for his loss. All those who lost faith in him – they don't matter anymore.

I don't know... perhaps time may yet prove to be the greatest healer.


End file.
